Kepler's Witch

by James A. Connor

  Therefore, I seriously questioned the Kepler woman under threat of imprisonment and also told her that I had no choice but report the matter to you. She, however, did not admit to any wrongdoing, and I let her go. She returned to my office with her son Christoph, the pewterer, who has an honest and good reputation. The Kepler woman said I should not believe her accusers. After I had explained to her son the details of the accusations against his mother, he sighed deeply and said that he wishes to God he could leave this town overnight with his poor belongings because of his mother. He said I should proceed with what I believe is in my jurisdiction, that God must want it that way.

  After this, the Kepler woman returned to the court for a third time solely to see me and beseeched me to refrain from reporting her to you, or at least to cause a delay or a halt. She wanted to give me a nice silver cup (unknown to her creditors, etc.), which she would promptly deliver.

  Now, having advised you of my modest opinion and having submissively reported to you the situation or at least having given you a better understanding (foremost because named Jörg Haller, a hardworking and respected lad, is also accused by the Kepler woman. Meanwhile, the girl is enduring great pain in her arm, which is still lame), I also want to advise you that the Kepler woman has gone to be with her son in-law, the pastor of Heumaden, and is there at present. I dutifully and expectantly submit my report and submit myself obediently to your grace.

  XII

  If One Practices the Fiend’s Trade

  Where Katharina’s trial begins, and she is horribly mistreated, and where Johannes must leave the emperor’s service for a time to come to her aid.

  AFTER THE SHAMEFUL ATTACK ON KATHARINA, Einhorn moved to quash the Kepler family’s slander case against Ursula. The Keplers expected their case, Kepler v. Reinbold, to come to court within a reasonable period of time, but because he was the magistrate, Einhorn was able to postpone it for over a year. His continuing disregard of the duke’s order to proceed with the Kepler family’s case against Ursula Reinbold during that time was surreal, a parody of justice, and can make sense, even politically, only if we consider that through Kräutlin, Einhorn enjoyed a secret behind-the-scenes channel of communication with the duke and his councilors. They were willing to forget his insubordination because Katharina’s main supporter, her son Johannes, was himself in a stink with the Stuttgart consistory over charges of hidden Calvinism. There was talk that Johannes might be as guilty of witchcraft as his mother. Some industrious soul had dug deep into the Tübingen archives and found a disputation that Kepler had written while in school there, which later became his Somnium, or Dream, illustrating Copernican theory by imagining a fanciful flight to the moon so the universe could be described from the perspective of moon people. Because in this tale, perhaps the first actual piece of science fiction, it was his mother who, through magical powers, summoned the spirits of the air to carry him to the moon, the wagging tongues of Leonberg assumed that this proved that the son too was a practitioner of dark magic.

  Although nasty tongues could threaten a simple, stubborn old woman, there was not much they could do against the emperor’s mathematician. In many ways, despite his loyalty to the duke, Kepler had outgrown his homeland and was too big a fish for them to spear. When he heard about this new round of gossip from his sister, he fired off a hot salvo to the Leonberg councilor and to the Leonberg Senate. In his letter (quoted in full before Chapter 1) he attacked the “devilish” people who had threatened his mother and used illegal means to terrorize the poor old woman into admitting that she was a witch when she was not. He rejected the talk about himself as one more intrigue to bring down his mother and then blatantly referred to his many years of imperial service, hinting not too subtly that they really should be careful, because he had the ear of the emperor himself. He demanded that the court send him copies of any documents they had gathered to date, and exhorted, or possibly even instructed, the councilor to do his job properly and to look after his family’s interests. Then he soundly reprimanded the magistrate without mentioning any names. But Einhorn had no shame, and because of his powerful protection by the Prince Friedrich Achilles and Kräutlin, Kepler’s admonitions meant little to him. He had little choice but to carry on, for he was afraid of being implicated in the events of August, when he and his dear friend Kräutlin had intoxicated themselves and threatened the life of Katharina Kepler with a sword.

  After a year of Einhorn’s stall tactics, the court in Stuttgart grew nervous. When the Reinbolds tried to postpone the case for another twenty weeks by “forgetting” to send their defense brief to the clerk, the judge, who had finally hit his limit, stopped the postponements and set the date as a terminus peremtorius, that is, no more delays.

  Then the Reinbolds got a break. There was a woman in town, the wife of Jörg Haller, who lived almost strictly on Ursula Reinbold’s charity; Ursula threw her odd jobs and passed her name around town as someone who would work cheap. The husband, Jörg, was the son of the long-dead Wasenmeister, what the British would call a knacker, the man in charge of killing sick horses and disposing of them. Jörg Haller was a day laborer and alcoholic who had “chased his money down his throat” and from that point on had tried to support himself through theft, so that his family had the reputation of being “loose, thievish, and godless riffraff.”1 Jörg had only recently stolen oats and hay from a local dyer and had run confidence games; he would often contract for labor, get paid, and then not show up.

  The sad condition of the Haller home caused two of their children to suffer from chronic illnesses. Frau Haller was terribly superstitious and spent a good deal of her time measuring other people’s heads, which was illegal because it involved magic and fortune-telling. Her brother also dabbled in fortune-telling and sold snake oil on the side.

  In October 1616, during the harvest, while the days were growing shorter and cooler and the townspeople prepared for winter, the local brick maker, Endriss Leibbrandt, needed some day labor. He was hiring young girls in town to carry baskets full of bricks to his new kiln and had already conscripted his daughter Barbara and about ten other girls, when he stopped by the Haller house to ask if their daughter Katharina could join them. Frau Haller agreed, because work was work and she could at least be assured that her daughter would get a hot meal that day. The girls gathered at Leibbrandt’s kiln on October 15 and carried bricks, probably from around five in the morning to past sundown. Katharina Haller had been with them, carrying heavy bricks and limestone, and her muscles must have been tired.

  At nine o’clock in the morning, the Kepler woman walked by, just as the group of girls had finished unloading their baskets of limestone at the kiln and was returning to the lime hut. The Haller girl was startled when she saw Frau Kepler and circled around her rather than get too close. Either her mother had said something to her or the gossip about Katharina Kepler had permeated everywhere, because the Haller girl was afraid when she saw her and tried to run away. After Frau Kepler had gone, the Haller girl returned and carried bricks for another hour and a half, when her arm hurt. Likely, she had tendonitis and her arm did hurt, or possibly she was lazy and wanted to skip off work early. That was when she claimed that Katharina Kepler had hit her on the arm.

  The brick maker didn’t believe a word of it, but his wife did. He argued that the girl had just been frightened when she saw the Kepler woman and there was no evidence that old Frau Kepler had done anything, so he questioned the other girls to find out what they saw. All of them said they saw the Kepler woman walk by, but only one girl saw Frau Kepler hit the Haller girl on the arm. The Haller girl then said that the other girls didn’t see the Kepler woman hit her, because they had already gone. Frau Kepler had returned after she had walked by and that’s when she hit her. The brick maker refused to attach any significance whatsoever to the Haller girl’s story, but his wife, possibly because he was so skeptical, believed every word. She went to Ursula Reinbold and told her the whole story.

  Ursula saw he
r chance. She suggested to the superstitious Haller woman that the pain that the poor girl had suffered was the Hexenschuss, the witch’s shot.2 When her daughter’s pain did not subside, Frau Haller took her case to Luther Einhorn.

  Two days later, Katharina Kepler was carrying an armload of hay to her home. Suddenly the Haller woman stood in front of her in the street, just before the gate to Katharina’s house, and demanded to know by what right she had beaten up her daughter, the poor girl who had never done her any harm. Katharina denied hitting Haller’s daughter, saying finally that perhaps she might have brushed her lightly with her basket as she passed her on the narrow path, but nothing more. Suddenly the Haller woman became violent, screaming, “Help the poor girl! I demand you help the girl!” Still shouting, she advanced on Katharina, who slowly backed away toward her home, which made the Haller woman scream even louder, accusing Katharina of witchcraft and demanding that she come at once to heal her daughter. Katharina was finally backed up against the wooden gate of her house, still denying that she had done anything to the girl, so the Haller woman pushed her so hard that Katharina fell against the gate, springing the latch, and then she stumbled backward, nearly falling.

  The Haller woman stood over her, demanding that Katharina come at once to cure her daughter, but Katharina insisted that she had done nothing to hurt the girl, which only made the Haller woman more violent still. Finally, she drew a knife from her belt and screamed at Katharina that she would help the girl or die on the spot. Saying this, she advanced on Katharina once again and held the knife at her throat. To save her life and to calm the mad Haller woman, Katharina agreed to follow her home. Standing, she followed her out onto the street and then suddenly turned and called out for her son Christoph to come: “Help me please!” she said. “Just one more time!” Christoph appeared from the house and stood between the two women. He spoke sharply to the Haller woman and told her that if she had any accusations to make, she should do so in a court of law.

  Luther Einhorn, spotting an opportunity, summoned Katharina to him two more times. On both of these occasions, the Keplers made some unfortunate mistakes and gave ammunition to the Reinbolds’ camp. The first time Katharina and Christoph appeared, Christoph muttered some foolish remark to the magistrate about this being only a silly matter between women; he said that he knew that his mother was a pain, and if he could, he would just leave town and be quit of her. He never thought his mother was a witch, but neither did he seriously reckon the forces that were gathering against her. He did not realize when he spoke with Einhorn that the magistrate was set against his mother and had no scruples about misusing his position.

  Katharina, however, was not much help. As with Johannes, it was her nature that once she believed she was in the right, she would pursue a dispute until she was vindicated. But she was also naïve. All this time, Einhorn was trying to keep Katharina’s slander case against the Reinbolds from coming to court and was looking for any opportunity he could find to turn the tables on the Keplers. During her second visit, Katharina begged the magistrate not to report the situation to Stuttgart and to allow her trial against the Reinbolds to come up. At this point, she did something incredibly stupid. She offered Luther Einhorn, who was already dead set against her, a bribe, a silver cup worth about 50 gulden, an act that would come back to haunt her throughout the trial.

  On October 22, Einhorn reported the affair to Stuttgart in a letter, for this was his chance to divert the duke’s attention from the slander case to the witchcraft case, which up until this point had gotten little notice. He related the Haller woman’s claim and placed himself into the story as a witness, saying that the girl’s agony started immediately and increased to the point that her hand was paralyzed. He also said that the Haller woman requested an investigation, though she fell short of accusing Katharina Kepler of witchcraft. Later on in his letter to the duke, he quite simply lied, making claims about the brick maker’s story that were not so, saying that he called the brick maker and his family in to testify and that the brick maker and his wife told him that their daughter had run home with the story, but they told her to be quiet about it.

  Einhorn here gives little indication that the brick maker had found the Haller girl’s story dubious or that he believed she had made up most of it. Charging on, however, Einhorn relates how the Kepler woman had been under intense suspicion of witchcraft for some years, which was not entirely true. Moreover, a week after the incident, people saw the Haller girl in the forest cutting wood.

  Einhorn then gets to the point—his point. For the first time, he has the opportunity to tell Ursula’s story in a legal setting, to bring her accusations out of the shadows of gossip where they had been festering for years and into the well-lighted courtroom. “The wife of the local glazier, Jakob Reinbold, in her defense to the civil charges brought against her by the Kepler woman, swears to her death that the Kepler woman gave her a magic potion four and a half years ago. That potion caused her to suffer inhuman pain that could not be relieved by any remedy or cure. The trial date (for the slander case) had been fixed for last Monday in order to examine the witnesses; however, it was then canceled in light of the above developments.”

  This was it. This is what Einhorn had wanted all along. At this point, he played his trump card. “After this, the Kepler woman returned to the court for a third time solely to see me and beseeched me to refrain from reporting her to you, or at least to cause a delay or a halt. She wanted to give me a nice silver cup (unknown to her creditors, etc.), which she would promptly deliver.”

  Einhorn needed to stop the slander trial and to insert the witchcraft trial for several reasons. First, the slander trial would have inevitably brought up questions about his own behavior; second, he was thoroughly entrenched in the Reinbold camp; and, third, if Katharina Kepler were convicted of witchcraft, then her property would be forfeit and, as magistrate, he would have control of its dispersal. On October 24, 1616, two days later, Einhorn got his wish. The Oberrat, the superior adviser to the courts, having been influenced by Prince Friedrich Achilles, who was in turn influenced by Urban Kräutlin, ordered from Stuttgart that the magistrate, Luther Einhorn, arrest the Kepler woman on suspicion of witchcraft, leave her in jail for a few days to let her fears work on her, and then seriously examine her. The use of torture was not specifically mentioned, but the threat of torture always remained in the background, a shadowy threat in any court examination.

  After the order for Katharina’s arrest came out, Christoph sent a letter to Johannes in Linz, informing him of their mother’s dangerous situation. The two brothers conspired to get the old woman out of town and as far away from the Leonberg authorities as they could. They wanted to talk Katharina into immigrating to Linz, where Johannes and Susanna could watch over her and where she would be far outside the Württemberg authorities’ jurisdiction. This would not have made Johannes’s life in Linz any easier, to have a mother accused of witchcraft move into a house where the son had been accused of heresy. Nevertheless, to have Katharina move to Linz was the best of a number of bad choices.

  But none of her children had reckoned on Katharina’s stubbornness. She wouldn’t have it. She believed that she was in the right, and that was that. To move out of Leonberg would be to abandon the field to the Reinbolds, something she could not do, before God. Katharina refused to go to Linz for fear that they might think she had a guilty conscience. Instead, she moved to Heumaden, which was close by, to the house of her daughter Margaretha and her son-in-law, Pastor Georg Binder.

  But living in Heumaden meant to Katharina that she would no longer be living in her own house or managing her own properties, and this burned her like acid. After she left town, the Reinbolds claimed that she had given evidence against herself by running away, which was exactly what Katharina feared. What she couldn’t see was that her life was in danger, whether she was a witch or not, and getting out of town was the only way to save it.

  After a great struggle within the family,
Katharina’s children managed to convince her to lease her home to Christoph for three years by promising that they would support her during that time. Since Christoph, who had just become a citizen of Leonberg, was still living in Luther Einhorn’s jurisdiction, the three children agreed that Margaretha and Johannes would take turns inviting Katharina into their homes. Christoph Kepler was adamant about his mother’s move to Heumaden, if not Linz, because he had a feeling that things were going to get very bad indeed for Katharina. The lies had been repeated so many times by so many people that they had begun to be accepted as the truth. By this time, Katharina was nearly under house arrest. Einhorn had warned Christoph to keep his mother from visiting other people in their homes, because this would cast even more suspicion onto her.

  On December 2, 1616, the duke’s consistory in Stuttgart ordered Einhorn to inventory all of Katharina Kepler’s assets. Einhorn did what he had been ordered to do—closed up her house and counted all her assets, with the expectation that he would be able to make payments out of it to the Reinbolds and the Hallers for their pain and suffering. After doing that, he bragged about town that it was he who got the old woman arrested, he who got her estate closed up, and he who would be in charge of her fortune.

  A few weeks later, in January 1617, Jakob Reinbold wrote to the duke himself and requested that the “fugitive” Kepler woman be arrested and brought back to Leonberg. He claimed that because his wife was still suffering and no one knew the kind of poison Katharina had put into her potion, the Kepler woman should be returned to Leonberg so that she could be forced to confess and to hand over the information they needed to help Ursula. Oh, and by the way, he asked the duke if Katharina’s estate could be confiscated rather than just inventoried and if he and his family could have a share of that estate for their pain and suffering.